It is entirely appropriate that we’re premiering the sophomore album from the Denton, Texas-based band Pyramids during our self-appointed Radiohead Week: Leaving aside the fact that their name is possibly (probably) a reference to Amnesiac’s “Pyramid Song,” no other “metal” band in the world has garnered more Radiohead comparisons. A Pitchfork review of Pyramids’ self-titled… More »

My first couple experiences hearing Blut Aus Nord’s Memoria Vetusta III – Saturnian Poetry came while walking around these abandoned or underused paths in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Not very black metal, I admit! But in Brooklyn, you have few vast expanses of nature in which to get lost, and to truly immerse yourself in Memoria… More »

In July’s Black Market, I wrote a long essay on the ways in which metal bands catfish their fans, and in that piece, I mentioned a number of contemporary examples of this phenomenon, including the “Scandinavian” black-metal auteur Myrkur and the Chicago-based USBM artist Blake Judd, who is best known for his band Nachtmystium. Both… More »

So it has been one hell of a week. And just when we thought it was all wrapped up, Thom Yorke comes outta nowhere and hits us with a whole new album. That’s not even fair! Is it? Well, fair or not, Thom was too late to be eligible for this week’s 5 Best Songs. More »

You can’t really talk in superlative terms when discussing entire genres populated by several nations’ worth of subgenres, but if you were forced at gunpoint to identify the “best black metal band in the world today,” you could comfortably nominate France’s Blut Aus Nord and at least not be wrong. Some backstory: Blut Aus Nord… More »

Here are the facts as we know them: Blut Aus Nord is the one-man black metal project of a Frenchman who calls himself Vindsval. Vindsval debuted his whole thing in 1994, but he has allowed the public to learn basically nothing about him in the years since, which is fine, since guys who make black… More »

Before the quibbling starts: I didn’t include YOB’s Atma because it isn’t out until August. It would be way up there. I’ve also been listening to Dragged Into Sunlight’s Hatred For Mankind quite a bit, but since it has an original release date of ’09 before Prosthetic’s 2011 reissue, I didn’t include that either. O… More »

Every year I’m tempted to — and sometimes do — say “this has been a great year for metal.” It’s a toss-away idea: If you consume the genre obsessively, every year seems sort of great, the chaff turning fuzzy and falling into the background, the favorites cementing themselves in your brain and eardrums. Or maybe… More »

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The Doors are part of a very specific category of classic-rock artists: the gateway artists. The bands that — assuming you weren’t around in the ’60s — are amongst the first names you explore when you start digging into pop music’s past. Though keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore were all… More »

Last night, U2 played the seventh night of an eight-night stand at Madison Square Garden. (Our own young classic rocker Ryan Leas reviewed one of those shows earlier in the week.) And at last night’s show, the band introduced a few special local guests. There was New York royalty Paul Simon, who came out to… More »

After reportedly showing up half an hour late, rapper Travi$ Scott got his Lollapalooza set shut down after only 5 minutes by encouraging fans to jump the security barrier and rush the stage. Festival organizers deemed the resulting chaos to be unsafe and shut the whole thing down, with security forcibly removing Scott from the… More »

Eminem is a pretty fit dude — for a while, he was even attached to star in Antoine Fuqua’s new boxing movie Southpaw. So how does Eminem stay a pretty fit dude? By working out compulsively. And in a new article on Men’s Journal, the rapper details his compulsive exercise regimen. “In the early days,”… More »

Morrissey often uses his True To You website to write about cases of what he considers to be societal injustice, as he did in the recent post blasting the killer of Cecil the lion. But as Pitchfork points out, Morrissey’s latest post for the site details a much more personal violation. Morrissey writes that, a… More »

Lollapalooza takes place this weekend in Chicago, and most of the sets from the festival will be livestreaming via Red Bull TV in case you can’t (or don’t want to) leave the comfort of your own home. Some of the acts performing this weekend include Paul McCartney (with a highlights-only set streaming), Metallica, the Weeknd,… More »

Superproducer Mark Ronson stopped by for a live in-studio session at Australian radio station Triple J today. As usual, he assembled a crack team of musicians to back him up, including Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and Kirin J. Callinan on guitar. The band performed a great psyched-out cover of Queens Of The Stone Age’s “I… More »

Drake has already released not one but two diss tracks in response to Meek Mill’s ghostwriting allegations. After Funkmaster Flex promised a Meek response track Monday night on Hot 97 and failed to deliver, people were pissed, and everyone began to wonder if this mega-beef were already over. But no — the soap opera continues! More »